Between the Middle East and the Americas

The Cultural Politics of Diaspora

Ella Habiba Shohat

Publication Year: 2013

Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora traces the production and circulation of discourses about "the Middle East" across various cultural sites, against the historical backdrop of cross-Atlantic Mahjar flows. The bo

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora
is a collaborative project that was probably in the making long before we
actually began conceptualizing it in 2003. Growing up in the wake of our
families’ displacement from Iraq, and having lived in multiple geographies
as part of complex...

Introduction

1. The Cultural Politics of “the Middle East” in the Americas: An Introduction

Shuttling between Rio de Janeiro and Fez, the hit Brazilian soap opera or
telenovela O Clone tells the tale of the forbidden yet enduring love between
a Catholic Brazilian man and a Muslim Moroccan woman. To an audience
increasingly curious about Islam and the Middle East, the series, which had
its début shortly...

2. The Sephardi-Moorish Atlantic: Between Orientalism and Occidentalism

The question of beginnings in relation to Edward Said’s book Orientalism
can be narrated in very diverse ways, leading to a potentially productive
question: when and where does Orientalism, and the critique of Orientalism,
actually begin? On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Said’s
book, it is instructive...

Nation, Culture, and Representation

3. Mahjar Legacies: A Reinterpretation

In the opening lines of his 1930 Arabian travel narrative, Ameen Rihani
locates himself with an Orientalist contradiction. Positioned within the
“Syrian Colony of New York” and with access to its modes of modern print
culture, the Lebanese émigré author nevertheless seeks “knowledge” from a
provincial Arabian...

4. Turcos in the Mix: Corrupting Arabs in Brazil’s Racial Democracy

Turco (Turk) has served as a general designation for “Middle Easterner” in
Brazil for more than a century. Coined by late nineteenth-century
Brazilian
elites to denigrate Syrian and Lebanese immigrants as economic pariahs,
the term of difference today continues to attribute an alleged shrewdness
to Brazilians...

5. From “Baisanos” to Billionaires: Locating Arabs in Mexico

In a popular U.S. newspaper column called “¡Ask a Mexican!” a reader wrote
the following to columnist Gustavo Arellano in April 2009.
Dear Mexican: First of all, don’t think that I’m a self-loathing
Mexican.
. . . For some strange reason, I have developed an intense fascination
with...

In November 2001, while former Argentine president Carlos Menem was
under house arrest in relation to an illegal arms deal investigation, the
Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona came to visit him wearing a black
turban.1 How can we begin to understand Maradona’s flamboyant gesture of
support for the...

7. They Hate Our Freedom, But We Love Their Belly Dance: The Spectacle of the Shimmy in Contemporary U.S. Culture

At a nearby Moroccan, Turkish, Lebanese, Greek, or Mediterranean restaurant,
belly dancers contribute to the general ambiance of the dining experience.
In the local gym, belly dancing classes have been added to the menu
of New Age exercise options, guaranteed to tone women’s bodies in addition
to improving...

In 2004, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) accused the
TV drama 24 of perpetuating stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.1 CAIR
objected to the persistent portrayal of Arabs and Muslims in the context of
terrorism, stating that “repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam
will only serve to increase...

9. When Pakistanis Became Middle Eastern: Visualizing Racial Targets in the Global War on Terror

This essay examines the incorporation of Muslim identities into the U.S.
racial formation through the recent War on Terror campaign that has collapsed
the boundaries of race, culture, and religion. The history of these
categories of race-making
are particularly vexing in the case of U.S. populations
of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, broadly racialized...

Diaspora, Transnation, and Translation

10. “A Strip, A Land, A Blaze”: Arab American Hip-Hop and Transnational Politics

There is an emerging generation of Arab American youth that has come
of age listening to the sounds of rap and that is now using hip-hop
as a
medium to address the question of Arab American identity as well as histories
of nation, migration, racism, war, and colonialism. If hip-hop
was
described as “the Black CNN” by Chuck D of Public...

11. Muslim Digital Diasporas and the Gay Pornographic Cyber Imaginary

In recent years, Arab American youth have been capitalizing on the potential
and reach of digital technology to help create a virtual public sphere
for participation, networking, and activism. The rampant developments in
cyber technologies have enabled the rise of digital diasporic communities
in the United States where Arab migrants...

12. Drawing the Line: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Mohammed Cartoons Controversy as It Unfolded in Denmark and the United States

Images of angry Muslims in Africa and the Middle East torching Scandinavian
embassies, stomping on Danish flags, and chanting death threats against
Danish cartoonists and politicians circulated the world in the first months of
2006. The immediate cause of the anger was twelve cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammed published...

Upon gaining their independence from Spain, Latin American countries
began the process of constructing their new national identities. Throughout
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Latin American intellectuals
and writers started invoking an image of the Orient in general, and the Arab
Other in particular, to assert a civilized...

14. User-Friendly Islams: Translating Rumi in France and the United States

In the 1960s and 1970s, numerous Anglophone poets and readers discovered
Rumi, the thirteenth-century
mystic, thinker, and poet who was born in
Vakhsh (contemporary Tajikistan), lived most of his life and died in Konya
(contemporary Turkey), and wrote in Persian.1 The affinities between several
strands of the New Age...

15. “Axising” Iran: The Politics of Domestication and Cultural Translation

On May 8, 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent George W. Bush a letter—the
first, formal, direct contact with a U.S. president by an Iranian leader
since 1980. The official U.S. response to the eighteen-page
letter, replete with
religious references and condemnations of U.S. foreign policy, was dismissal...

16. “The Uneven Bridge of Translation”: Turkey in between East and West

On the home page of the official website for the Office of Turkish Culture
and Tourism there is a music video clip showing a digital billboard advertising
Turkey juxtaposed over the neon-lit
Nasdaq building in Times Square.
The song that plays, “Here I Am” from Turkish pop singer Sertap Erener’s
recent English-language...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.